Dell first learned of "contaminates that create an internal short circuit" in 2005

CRN is reporting
that Dell first identified the cause of the failures in Sony manufactured batteries late last year. At the time, however, Dell believed that the faulty batteries
were in a small sample of notebooks and decided to recall only 22,000
units.

"Thank you for
your full report of November 10, 2005. ... In your report, submitted on behalf
of Dell Inc. ... you indicated that some lithium-ion battery cells manufactured
for Dell could contain contaminates that create an internal short circuit. An
internal short circuit could result in excessive heat, smoke or flames in the
battery pack and possibly beyond, creating risk of thermal burn," wrote
Stern.

As we all now know, that isn't the last we heard from Dell
on the battery recall front. In mid-August, the company recalled an additional 4.1 million
notebooks batteries manufactured by Sony that were stricken with the same
problem.

A spokesman for Dell recently tried to clarify why the
problem with the batteries, which was correctly identified in November of 2005,
was not fully rectified until August of 2006:

"The failure
mechanism itself was different enough in December to what we saw in the last
several weeks [before the August recall]. We diagnosed it [last year]. There
was a trend. We really felt like we pinpointed it in December and went on with
our lives, so to speak. That's part of what you could assume would be driving
the scope of the recall back then. That's sort of an indication that, with
Sony's insistence and our conversations with them, they were able to pinpoint
... a population to be isolated that we could diagnose and feel highly
confident it was limited to that population of 22,000 units," said Dell
spokesman Ira William.

As reported last week, Dell has recently expanded its recall
to include a total of 4.2
million units. It was also reported yesterday that Sony was instituting a Global Replacement Program
to help notebook manufacturers and customers with the battery recall.

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